After talking with length at Josh, we discovered that we all had a mutual love of photography and, almost one year later, the result of that serendipitous meeting – because we had previously discussed the idea of photography workshops in West Africa – is that we are now back in The Gambia, to teach our first photography workshop to a number of young Gambian students.

In the classroom, through slideshow presentations and discussion, we’ll be covering a number of topics, including : a history of photography, digital camera operation, photography techniques, composition, and editing. On a practical level, the students will be given assignments to complete – the main one being ‘Home – the way I see it‘. As an example to aid the Gambian students with this assignment, we asked each of our professional photographers to provide us with images on the same theme. We received a incredibly diverse cross section of images from them – some very literal, others not so literal. More on that soon.

At the end of the daily workshops the students will have the opportunity to share their images with the whole village, projected onto a giant six meter inflatable screen – courtesy of the U.S Embassy – along with the work of our contributing professional photographers.

Access to the internet in The Gambia has grown exponentially over the last few years and, due to this, almost all of the kids we meet these days are using some kind of social media platform (such as Facebook) – it used to be that when we met kids on our travels here they wanted to give you their postal address, and vice versa. However, now the mantra is ‘will you be my Facebook friend?’ Therefore, we’ll be guiding the students on how to effectively use social media networks – as well as the power of blogging – to share their stories

The workshop will culminate in an exhibition and gala event, where the students work will be displayed through projection and print, to an invited audience – including family, friends and local dignitaries. Following the event, we hope to find an exhibition space to open the exhibit to the general public, inviting other students and their teachers from around the country to come along and view the work – and to talk to them about the possibility of participating in future photography workshops.

Further thanks…

Aside from our contributing photographers, we also wish to thank our partners in this venture, particularly to Josh Shrager – Public Affairs Officer/Acting Political and Economic Affairs Officer – and all at the U.S. Embassy, Banjul, for giving us the opportunity to make this workshop happen:

We’ll be updating as regularly as a decent internet connection will allow us. To avoid missing what we’re up to, you can always subscribe to the blog (click on ‘Follow’ on the left hand column); ‘like’ our new ‘Photos Tells Stories’ FB page; follow us on twitter.